


aseret ha-dibrot

by allapplesfall



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Antisemitism, Brainwashing, Character Study, Gen, Growing Up, Jewish Comics Day, Jewish Natasha Romanoff, Natasha Romanov-centric, Red Room, The Ten Commandments - Freeform, spoiler alert: happy ending, underage sex (brief mention)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 18:30:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7065310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allapplesfall/pseuds/allapplesfall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha's life, as told through the Ten Commandments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	aseret ha-dibrot

**Author's Note:**

> tw: antisemitism, underage sex/statutory rape (brief), and the Red Room is just generally fucked up
> 
> Many thanks to my friends sonia (@petraycca on tumblr) and zoe (@marshmallowez). They did sensitivity reading for me as well as general proofreading. Their input is so valuable because I'm a gentile, and while I wanted to support my friends in the Jewish community for Jewish Comics Day, I didn't want to be accidentally offensive and ruin the vibe. That being said, if you see anything that you want me to change, let me know and I'll do so immediately!

_א_ _. respect thy mother and thy father_

 

Candles. Flickering light. A thin cracker, hidden behind a curtain. Giggling. Hands over her eyes. Words—forgotten now, empty spaces in her soul—whispered in solemn prayer. A taste of wine, sour. A weathered book, written in a script that she had once known better than Cyrillic. Her father’s head, covered in a simple black skullcap—she’d known the name of it once, the consonants clear on her tongue. Her mother smiling, putting ingredients on a small plate. Constant fear of being discovered. Neighbors always moving away. Smoke choking her, armed men yelling slurs. A fire in her home, soldiers with uncovered hair, rough hands pulling at her curls. Screaming.

These are things Natalia remembers from before the Red Room.

They hide in the marrow of her bones, phantoms that have settled into the only place where the needles won’t touch. Memories that are too core to her being to be deleted, fleeting impressions of what she once was, of _who_ she once was—they live inside her, beating with her heart. Every night, after the instructors chain her to her bed, she grits her teeth and tries to picture the faces of her parents in her mind’s eye. She never manages it, but she hears whispers of a language that has forsaken her lips. It aches in her chest, like something vital has been stolen from her.

She can’t remember what it is.

She’s eight now, and she’s been in the Program for three years. She dances very well. She’s the pride of her class. None of the bareheaded men in the audience yell slurs at her while she twirls. Why would they? She is Natalia Romanova. She has red hair, flat-ironed into a bun, and has only ever known Russian.

In the Red Room, they make the girls celebrate Christmas. It’s seven whole days of Jesus and Birth and Russian Culture. Natalia is always sick for that week. They hit her for it, starve her for it— _no, they smile at her, forgive her_ —no, they take off their belts— _no_. No matter how much she tries to stand stoically, her body always rebels against the solo recitations of prayers to a son of G-d.

The Red Room has no religious affiliations. Neither does Natalia.

And yet.

She hates her parents, some nights. When the thought of them creeps into her mind, slipping through the cracks of dancing and bloody knuckles—she hates them more than she has ever hated anyone. They left her, died— _no, the Red Room instructors are her only parents, she has never known other family_ —no, she had parents but they are gone, dead in a fire and a killed by people who hate them for a reason Natalia can no longer name. But before they went, they put something vital in her chest and then left her alone with people who wanted to kill that part of her.

Did they know what they have done to her? She is a creature of two worlds, one forgotten and one fake.

On other nights, she wants to cry for them. She doesn’t, because no one cries in the Red Room; the girls who cry are led out into the snow and shot. ( _No, they go home to warm fires and happy smiles and_ —lies.) But though she chokes back her tears, she aches for them. Her parents were proud and happy. They pressed a nebulous _belonging_ into Natalia’s hands, a tattered book of many voices, and they loved her. She should not, _cannot_ , hate them for that.

There is a third type of night, as well. Those are the worst nights, though she’s never aware of it at the time. Those are the nights where they have managed to drill the thoughts of her parents out of her mind, where they inject her and prod her and wipe her mind clean enough for them to simply…cease to exist. On those nights, she is a Russian ballerina and her hair is straight and she lives only to serve the motherland. She has no memories of candles or cracker-bread. As she gets older, these nights become more and more frequent.

She never forgets entirely, though. She has forgotten too much to lose her parents too. Just as she can never hate them, she can never neglect them in such a fashion.

Natalia has no religious affiliation.

And yet.

 

 

_ב_ _. thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor_

           

Natalia is ten when Ekaterina is accused of attempting to escape.

( _Escape what? the girls wonder. Who would want to escape the beautiful life they’ve been given?)_

“You,” their instructor spits, his meaty hands gripping Ekaterina’s slim shoulders. “You stole my keys!”

She shakes her head, terrified—she is so much gentler than Natalia, so much kinder, so much more fearful. Her voice climbs two octaves as she says, “I didn’t! I swear!”

The instructor bares his teeth, savage. He rounds on the rest of the girls. “You saw her, didn’t you?”

For all their makeup and pointe shoes, the girls of the Program are soldiers. Orders are meant to be followed, and follow them they must. One by one, they all nod. All of them, at least, save Natalia.

“Natalia,” Ekaterina gasps, her eyes wide and pleading. “Please. Please tell them I didn’t do it.”

Natalia looks into the eyes of the instructor. She sees him for what he is: a scared, dull-witted man with more muscle than common sense and a habit for misplacing keys. But he also has a gun strapped to his thigh, and she is too far away to be able to react before he fires. If she defends Ekaterina, he will paint the floor with the red of both of their veins.

“I’m sorry, Katenka,” she whispers. Her gut clenches as she says the words. She looks down. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Ekaterina begins to cry. The instructor is not a man raised by wolves, not like the girls are, but he is a creature who has always feasted on the meat the wolves dragged in for him. When he leers, he shows yellow teeth in place of canine fangs.

He shoots Ekaterina right then and there—the blood splatters onto Natalia’s face, still warm. She wants to retch. This is not right. Someone else should bear witness to this, someone should testify that Katenka was ever there—a name rises to her lips.

“ _Adonai,_ ” she whispers. Her voice is half a song. There it is, laid bare: a name that she had forgotten until this moment, erased and beaten from her thoughts. It is liberating and devastating, candles and flames and the blood of a dead girl on her tongue. “ _Adonai_ , please.”

“What did you say?” the instructor asks, his voice a growl.

“ _Adonai_.”

He spits a slur, then, the one from the men from her house all those years ago. The other girls turn, confused. They don’t know what it means.

Natalia doesn’t either.

The instructor drags her back to the conditioning chamber with her flat hair in his fist, relishing when the doctor opens his case of equipment. Madam stands outside, shaking her head; Natalia is the pride and joy of the Red Room, and Natalia has malfunctioned.

They make her forget the name she spoke. It is weakness. Ekaterina was weak and now Ekaterina is dead.

_(Of course she’s not dead. There is no blood in the Red Room. She went home to be with her family. The training was too rigorous for her, but we are glad she is safe.)_

 

 

_ג_ _. thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods_

 

The ground is uneven beneath the truck’s wheels, bumping and shaking the seat. Natalia’s face is pressed almost painfully to the window. There are so many _people_ outside the truck, so many _buildings_. Who knew the world was this crowded?

It is her first time off of the facility grounds ( _this year, she means this year)_ , and everything is so wonderfully noisy. A little girl runs past the truck, dazzled up in a colorful dress and tights. Ribbons spin in her hair. Laughter practically radiates off of her. She calls to her father, a big man who scoops her up with a grin.

Ivan is in the front seat, and he catches Natalia watching.

“Foolish man, isn’t he?” he asks, nodding his head toward the father. “Little girls are wolves in sheep’s clothing. Ballerinas of blood.”

Natalia nods. She knows this; she was a little girl once, though at thirteen she can no longer hold the title. But that specific little girl had looked so happy…

She wishes she could have that.

But no—that would mean the little girl wouldn’t. The little girl could have been too weak for the Program. The little girl could have been dead at this very minute. Natalia is an asset. She is perfect. She is doing her duty, and doing it proudly. She has no time to dream of dimples or sunshine.

Hers is not a life she would wish on anyone. Dreaming of what cannot be—there is no point. It is not what she was put here to do, by Ivan or by anyone.

 

 

_ד_ _. thou shalt not commit adultery_

 

A man gasps and writhes above her, his breath coming in sour pants against her face. He presses into her, shuddering. She gives him what he wants, pleasure with her fingers and thighs. In a few minutes, when he sleeps, she will walk out and deliver the intelligence he had been too excited to care about revealing.

It is her mission, and, at fifteen, Natalia is the best at her missions.

A wedding ring gleams off the man’s hairy finger. It is thick, a sturdy gold band—the sight of it makes her feel nothing. She is past the point of caring about a man’s morality. His wife will never know, or if she does she will not tell him. Divorce doesn’t exist with men like this one: you either outlive him with your silence or you murder yourself with your tongue.

Natalia will do neither. The man is already fading, struggling to pull out before he falls asleep on top of her. She pushes herself out from under him, rolling him so he is face up. She goes into his bathroom, pisses, and washes her hands and face. Every time she does this, she cannot help but feeling _unclean_. Washing her hands is important; it gives her some input into her own safety. She just wants to get the man’s stink off of her, but this one made it so hard—disgusting, slobbery kisses, touches that make her want to bleach her skin.

As she walks out, she spits on him. She aims for his wedding ring.

 

 

_ה_ _. thou shalt not steal_

 

_Soldat_. That’s what the instructors call him. _Soldat_ , they say, _attention_. Natalia doesn’t know why they bother elaborating—the _soldat_ is always at attention. He stands in the shadows, his metal arm gleaming. The hair on the back of her neck will rise during a training session, and she’ll know that he is watching her.

She wonders what he sees.

He hovers in the dark for a while, a specter in her imagination. With his hair pulled back, a star on his shoulder, and an aura of danger, he cuts a strikingly distinct silhouette. When the instructors announce she will be getting a new teacher today, she does not have to look twice at the figure standing in the doorway.

The instructor overseeing them barks and orders—she can’t make out what he says, doesn’t care to make it out; she knows what he wants them to do. Blood stains everything that either of them touches. What hunter wouldn’t want to pit their best dogs against each other? They will spar, one of them will win, and the loser will learn for next time.

With an easy grace, the _soldat_ settles into a wide stance on the sparring mat. Natalia mirrors him. His eyes are empty of bloodlust, or competitiveness, or…anything, really. He stands like a blank slate in front of her, and she can almost believe that he is one.

“Begin!” the instructor commands.

Natalia and the _soldat_ circle each other for what feels like an impossibly long time. He is appraising her for a weakness, for an opening, as she does the same to him. They are two wolves in a forest clearing, the trees burning on all sides. She sees the sweat trickling down his temple: the fire must bite at his heels like it has hers for her whole life.

“ _Begin_ ,” says the instructor again, impatient. “Or I can bring the Madam in.”

The _soldat_ ’s strike comes almost faster than she can see. Only a life of anticipation lets her roll with the punch, saving her from taking it to the temple like it was intended. She shakes herself. She needs her head on for this spar.

Another punch comes, this one aimed at her solar plexus, but she manages to twist out of its way. She sees the kick before he deals it out, the muscles in his calf giving him away. Hands flying out in front of her, she snags his ankle in her hands and pulls. He stumbles, but recovers quickly. The dance continues.

Natalia is the best ballerina in the Red Room ( _the only one left_ ), but the _soldat_ swings and ducks with the precision of a well-balanced blade. She is incredible; he is untouchable. It is only a few minutes before he catches her in the jaw, sending her careening into the mat below. Her vision spins.

“Get up,” the instructor calls. Useless foxhunter.

The _soldat_ ’s foot hovers above her face, about to crash down and shatter her nose, but she grabs it as it stomps and yanks him down with her. Like animals, the two of them thrash and bite at each other on the floor. Sweat pools beneath them. Natalia’s hair begins to curl with the moisture.

Finally, as her own blood is beginning to get into the corners of her eyes, the _soldat_ stops toying with his food and pins her down. He has won. Natalia is surprised to find that she doesn’t mind.

The _soldat_ ’s eyes are brighter than when they began. “Not bad,” he grunts. It’s the first time she’s heard him speak. He sounds lighter than a man with killing in his heart should.

She smiles back, venom and toxic snow painting her face. She is the Black Widow, she is the daughter of the Red Room, but he—he carries something else with him. She likes it.

After that first fight, the _soldat_ is her only instructor. He is not gentle, but he is not cruel. Natalia is surprised to find that she isn’t especially cruel either, not when no one is there to make her be. Deadly, yes—barbaric, no. Eventually, the two of them are assigned on joint missions.

A soldier and spy; a spider and the winter; a two-wolf pack—when she is with him, she feels full of possibilities. But it is on their seventh mission, in the heat of a Belarusian cabin, when she learns something that changes everything.

“ _Soldat_?” she asks, because with him it is all right to ask questions. “What is your name?”

He stares at her, his metal finger tracing the countertop that lies between them. “James,” he says finally. “I saw it on a file.”

“You don’t remember anything before the Program, do you?” It is not a question, but she still says it as one.

“No. But I was someone, once. I was James.”

“James. In Russian, we would say _Yasha_.”

There is an expression on his face that she can’t decipher. He says, “I’m not Russian.”

“What?”

( _Natalia is the epitome of Russian. She has only ever known Russian. She loves to celebrate seven-day Christmases, sing hymns to a crucifix_ —no.)

“I don’t know,” the _soldat—_ Yasha—says. “It’s just a feeling. I used to belong, but now…”

“Tell me,” she says roughly, attempting to disguise that it is a plea. “Tell me.”

“I don’t remember much. Lots of food. Loud voices. Candles.”

_Candles_.

He continues, “Wine. I was always told not to be the…wicked child? I had sisters.”

Silence stretches out, until he speaks one last time, “The name. HaShem. Adonai.”

_Adonai_. Natalia turns away from him and vomits on the floor. She can’t stop shaking. _Baruch atah—no, Natalia has only ever spoken Russian—_ no, she was a part of something, once. A tattered book of many voices. She belonged. _Candles._ When she clutches at her head, her hair is curly beneath her fingers.

Something was _taken_ from her as a child, and it was agony. Getting it back is nearly unbearable.

“What is it all?” she whimpers. “ _Adonai_.”

Yasha is staring at her, shocked. He looks like he is shattering in front of her. There are tears on his cheeks. “I don’t remember.”

They never let her see Yasha again. She thinks they put him in a chamber, lock him away, wipe him, but she’s not sure.

Natalia’s mind has been clear since the conversation in the cabin. It is clear in a way that she doesn’t remember ever being. She knows things, now. She’s not a wolf: she’s a person. Her blood is not _destined_ to be spilled in cold Russian snow; her blood is made of thousands, and she is her own.

It’s a startling discovery.

Three weeks after the cabin—later she will call it her nineteenth birthday—she escapes.

Escape. What a beautiful word.

She steals a set of keys from an instructor. _(A bullet, blood splattering on her face, a dead girl who most definitely never went home.)_ There has never really been much between Natalia and freedom, only her mind and some pointe shoes that never existed.

Only one guard is posted outside—no one expects her to attempt this. They operate under little orphan assassin is far too brainwashed. She is their _slave_ , she realizes for the first time—it shocks her how angry the thought makes her. Now she will never be a slave again. She kills the guard with a knife to the chest.

She steals a set of keys. She steals her freedom.

No, she cannot have stolen her freedom—that was stolen from _her_. She doesn’t steal it, she just gets it back.

 

 

_ו_ _. thou shalt not kill_

Natalia is free at last, an agent alone. She wants to be good, to be better, because she sees now—what she had done for the Red Room is vile. The acts she can perform better than brushing her teeth, those taught to her since childhood, they are all of them evil. She is dripping in blood, and sometimes she thinks of herself as a wolf again.

It is surprisingly impossible to get a normal job. She is out of Russia, but she speaks half a dozen languages to the point of native fluency. Shouldn’t it be easy to find somewhere that will hire her? But they all want papers and things that Natalia—the girl who doesn’t exist outside of nightmares—simply doesn’t have.

It doesn’t take long for her to fall back into her old habits. The only people that will hire her are those who know what she was before, and they only want her for the talent she possesses for cracking bones and skulls. She hunts at night, watching her targets fall over and over. Each time she begs, silently, that one of them will have a gun that they can turn on her.

Natalia has always been a creature of death. Even as a child she danced with it, fouettéing around it with her leg in the air. She was crafted to serve it, sewn from stained ribbons into something made to rend tombstones from the earth itself. She lives in it, bathes in it, and stares it in the face every time she closes her eyes. She’s terrified of it. She longs for it. She hates dealing death out more than she has ever hated any living thing.

She’s so tired of killing.

One day, her wish comes true. One day, a man she’s been tracking over rooftops turns, a bow in his hand. It’s such a ridiculous weapon, but she knows with absolute certainty that if he shoots, his arrow will find its mark. He looks her in the eyes. She’s so _relieved_.

He doesn’t shoot.

 

_ז_ _. thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain_

 

“My father wore a _kippah_ ,” Natasha blurts one day. She feels a swoop of nausea, but the word is so clear off her lips. It feels so right.

Clint is sitting on his couch, a piece of greasy pizza dangling from his fingers. He frowns. “I didn’t know you were Jewish.”

“I’m not,” she says, now frowning too. She knows what Judaism is in only the vaguest terms.

“You just said your father wore a _kippah_ ,” Clint counters, his voice kind. “That’s a Jewish custom, Tasha. How else would you know what it is?”

Natasha sits down hard on the couch next to him. What is happening? She feels like a thousand frayed threads—maybe she might be beginning to weave herself back together. But she couldn’t be Jewish; she’d grown up celebrating Christmas.

Carefully—like the word might break—she asks, “Clint? What’s _Adonai_?”

His face gentles beneath a week’s worth of stubble. “It’s a Hebrew word for G-d.”

So much suddenly clicks into place. She’s Jewish. Yasha must have been Jewish too. _A weathered book, written in a script that she had once known better than Cyrillic._

“But what does G-d _mean_?”

Clint reaches over and puts his hand carefully on her calf. “I think you have to figure that out for yourself.”

“How?” She doesn’t even know where she would start. What G-d could be out there? For someone like her?

“I know a synagogue a few blocks south,” he says. “The rabbi there is a friend of mine. That might be a place to start.”

One new SHIELD trainee, a brash bully, sneers when he sees the Star of David necklace that Clint got her as a gift. “G-dammit,” he says. “And here I thought you were gonna be impressive.”

Natasha has him expelled from SHIELD academy.

 

           

_ח_ _. thou shalt not worship false idols_

           

Phil calls them gods, and they rain down from the sky like gunfire.

Asgardians.

They’re powerful, sure. They can control lightning or illusions. They have lived for nearly as long as humanity has existed. But they’re not gods. They don’t deserve the title of G-d, because only He is worthy of that. No magic hammer is going to tell Natasha any different.

_“But I’m a G-d!”_ Loki hisses from inside his cell. “What are you?”

Natasha turns on him, suddenly glad her necklace is tucked into her uniform. This creature doesn’t deserve to see that part of her. She stalks up to the cage, aware that her glare is menacing. Natasha may be a person, but some part of her has never forgotten the wolf that lived inside her.

“I,” she says threateningly, “am the most dangerous thing to a G-d. I’m a believer. And do you know what it means if a believer doesn’t believe you’re a G-d?”

Loki takes a step back, puzzled. He’s rattled, though, she can tell. She’s touched some terrified part of him with a cattle prod, reminding him that sometimes the herd can shock back.

“Enlighten me,” he drawls. His pupils are wide, betraying what Loki doesn’t want her to know: he’s scared.

She wants to laugh. “It means you’re not a G-d. You’re a false idol, Loki. No one believes in a false idol. False idols can die.”

“Is that a threat?’

“Does it need to be?”

 

_ט_ _. remember and observe the Sabbath and keep it holy_

Friday evening is always peaceful in the Avengers complex. Not even supervillains are allowed to disrupt that—if they tried, they would be defeated before they hit the perimeter. Friday nights are sacred.

On the table, there are two candles. People crowd around them, murmuring happily to each other. Natasha and Wanda always stand at the front. They smile at each other.

This Friday evening, it’s Natasha’s turn to say the welcoming blessing. She and Wanda alternate every week, neither being the defined matriarch of the household. At eighteen minutes to sundown, Wanda nods her forward. Yasha—Bucky—stands at her right shoulder.

Natasha puts her hands up over her eyes. “ _Baruch atah Adonai,_ ” she prays, surrounded by her family and friends, “ _Eloheinu, melech ha'olam.”_

She never straightens her hair on Shabbat.

 

 

_י_ _. I am the Lord thy G-d_

 

Natalia was born in a house filled with laughter. Her father wore a _kippah_ and her mother taught her prayers. They were her parents, and they gave her something that could never be taken away.

Natalia was born in a house full of laughter, but she was stolen away by people who made her think she was a wolf. They dressed her in tutus and pointe shoes and made her celebrate Christmas until she was sick. To them, she was an instrument in the act of murder.

Natalia was born in a house full of laughter, just like Bucky Barnes. They found each other. He helped liberate her.

Natalia was born in a house of laughter, but it was never possible to return there until Clint Barton saved her life. The synagogue down the street became her second home, thanks to him.

Natalia was born in a house filled with laughter, and so was Natasha. She was a child of G-d, never a wolf or a demon or a ballerina. She was a believer. She had regained her people, and her culture.

Candles.

 

 

 


End file.
